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How to Create Custom Picture Placeholders in PowerPoint

This tutorial will teach you how to create a custom image placeholder. This tutorial was made using PowerPoint 2013 but the same instructions apply to PowerPoint 2010 as well. In PowerPoint you can fill any shape with an image but if you want to customise your basic square image placeholder here is guide how to do that.

Shaped Picture Placeholder

To create a basic shape picture placeholder go to View -> Slide Master and Insert Placeholder -> Picture. Once you have made your picture placeholder, have it selected and go to Format tab -> Edit Shape -> Change Shape and pick your shape. There you have it, you now got a your placeholder square changed to a basic shape.

If you want to do more unique shape, that doesn’t exist in the shape gallery follow the following steps.

Custom Shape Picture Placeholder

Remain in the Slide Master view and make picture placeholder. After making the picture placeholder pick a shape form the Shapes gallery and put all your shapes in place. Then select your picture placeholder and go to Format tab -> Edit Shape -> Change Shape and pick your shape (same as image above), even if you would want to just use the rectangle.

After you have done that select all the elements and go to Merge Shapes -> Subtract, or choose the option that suits your desired design but for the placeholder in the preview image we use subtract. As simple as that, now you have your custom picture placeholder ready.

You can duplicate your picture placeholder by pressing CTRL + D or if you need to copy your picture placeholder to another PowerPoint document/slide, right click on the picture placeholder and choose copy (CTRL + C) and paste it to your new document/slide (CTRL + V).

Is there something that you have always wanted to learn to do with PowerPoint? Leave you comment below and I’ll try to cover that topic in my next PowerPoint tutorial.